


Sleepless

by zmethos



Category: Simon Snow & Related Fandoms
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-23
Updated: 2020-12-23
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:15:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28268229
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zmethos/pseuds/zmethos
Summary: Unable to sleep, Simon and Baz wrestle with their feelings.(Character study set post-"Wayward Son.")
Relationships: Tyrannus Basilton "Baz" Pitch/Simon Snow
Kudos: 14





	Sleepless

SIMON

He’s so goddamn beautiful when he sleeps. I mean, he’s beautiful all the time, but asleep he seems more… touchable. When he’s awake, even when I know he _wants_ me to touch him, I feel like I shouldn’t. Survival instinct, maybe. He’s a predator, after all. Like one of those vibrant carnivorous flowers. Do the insects know? But then they just can’t resist, so they allow themselves to be lured to their dooms…

I’m the insect.

So far this hasn’t killed me, but odds are it will eventually. I’ve made peace with that. He can hurt me as much as he wants; I don’t care. I just don’t want to hurt him.

And if he did hurt me—even on accident—it would kill him.

We’ve tied ourselves in a tidy knot.

I stare. I should sleep, but the moonlight streaming through the window makes his skin seem to glow. Angelic. Which isn’t a word usually used in conjunction with Baz, but this time it fits. Don’t some angels carry swords? Don’t they battle evil? That’s Baz. He didn’t choose to be a predator, but he absolutely signed up to be a warrior. It’s just one of many things I love about him.

There are things not to love. The fact he might lose his mind and bite me one day. (Actually, I haven’t decided how bothered to be about that.) He’s moody. Sometimes he won’t let me get near him at all. And even when he allows snuggling, it isn’t always fun. He doesn’t have many soft spots; he’s all angles and points and a body like marble. He’s usually cold, too—physically, I mean. But I’m usually hot—again, physically—so it often feels like a relief to touch Baz.

When he lets me.

To be fair, I don’t always want him close to me, either. And I don’t even have the excuse of being worried I might be unable to resist draining him of blood. (Baz doesn’t have blood. I don’t think?)(Except when he drinks it.)(You get my meaning.)

I can’t explain it. Sometimes my feelings are just too much. Sensory overload, maybe. I get scared. Not of Baz, of myself.

I can’t go off anymore, not like I used to. I’m not worried about that. I do worry I’m too mundane now, even with wings and a tail. (Baz spells them off before bed to keep from getting thwacked all night.) What do I really have to offer? Except to be in the way?

Baz twitches in his sleep. I watch closely, trying to figure out whether the dream is a good one, but it’s impossible to tell. Baz always uses an economy of motion, even when asleep. He doesn’t move unless he has to or wants to, and when he does, it’s fluid as water. All grace. Even when he’s hungry and stumbling, it looks properly choreographed.

Baz’s brow furrows and his nostrils flare in a way that suggests the dream is not a good one after all. Out of habit, I inch away a little. You don’t comfort vampires when they’re sleeping. I’ve learned that the hard way. I can practically hear Baz’s voice in my head: “Give me space, Snow.”

I hold my breath, waiting to see if he lashes out, wakes up. But his eyes remain shut, and rather than move, he goes preternaturally still. Like a statue. Or a corpse.

I don’t like to think about Baz being dead. Or undead, or whatever he is. To me, he’s alive. (Even if he is cold to the touch.) We argue about it a lot.

“Dead is not moving, not thinking,” I once told him.

“So sleep is the same as dead?” he asked. In that way that makes him a bit of a bastard. (I haven’t decided if that’s something I love or hate about him.) (Can it be both?)

“No! You know what I mean. You just don’t have a good argument so you’re splitting hairs.

“You can die,” I went on. “Which means you are alive.”

He didn’t answer. (Does that mean I won?) (I never win against Baz.)

I don’t like to think about the things that can kill Baz, either, but it’s important to keep them in mind: fire, decapitation, stake through the heart. I’m not sure if he can starve to death, but I don’t particularly want to find out.

Other things we don’t know: whether, barring the above, Baz is immortal. I mean, he’s not still five years old, so we know he ages. Does that stop at some point? Will he top out at 25 or 30?

Meanwhile, I’ll just get older and…

Will he miss me when I’m gone?

Another thing I don’t like to think about is the possibility that I’m holding Baz back. While we were in America, he found another vampire—not just any vampire, but the so-called Vampire King—in Vegas. I remember how the two of them looked together, the way family members look in group portraits. Like they came from the same place. Like they belonged.

Baz can’t help being glamorous. It’s his natural state. And I’m like dirt, dulling his shine.

BAZ

The terrible thing about sleeping next to Simon Snow, even after removing the wings and tail, is that he moves around too much. I’d spell him asleep and immobile, but I’m afraid he’ll become dependent on it. Or I will. If this is ever going to work, we have to adapt. We can’t force it.

But really, is this ever going to work?

I always knew it would end in, well, the end of me. Which was fine. _Is_ fine. I just wasn’t prepared for prolonged agony.

Being with Simon is joy and torture at the same time. It’s very confusing. Neither one of us knows what we’re doing or what to expect. We only seem to function properly when the world around us is falling apart.

Well, if it takes tearing the world apart to keep him, I’ll do it.

It would just be easier if he’d allow me to get some sleep.

SIMON

I risk getting closer, just to make sure he’s still breathing. His heart beats slower than a normal person’s; I usually can’t find it at all, so checking for a pulse is useless. But he breathes. It’s a sound that, after eight years of rooming with him, I’ve come to depend on in order to sleep.

Relief washes over me when I see the slight lift and fall of his chest.

The first nights in the new flat were difficult without Baz. We had decided we should live separately, get out of each other’s way a bit. He didn’t sleep over at all for… well, longer than I would have liked. And then I started to not want him around at all. Not because I didn’t want him—I’m pretty sure I’ll always want Baz—but because I don’t deserve him.

Then we went to America. And… I still don’t deserve him. But I’ll hold on to him as long as I can.

Now he sleeps over sometimes.

BAZ

“Look, you gargoyle.” My tongue feels thick in my mouth, too tired to move. “I can’t sleep with you hovering over me like that.”

“You have dozens of gargoyles carved into your bed back home,” he reminds me.

I open my eyes. The moonlight feels too bright, but Snow never closes the drapes. At least he hasn’t opened the window. Small victories.

He’s stretched out beside me, his cheek propped in his hand, the moonlight haloing his golden curls. “More angel than gargoyle.”

“I was just thinking that about you,” he says.

Damnation. Had I said it aloud?

“You should sleep,” I tell him. “Wait, you were thinking what about me?”

“That you’re like that angel that carries a sword—”

“You’re the one who plays with swords,” I remind him.

“All fierce, but good. Not evil.”

“It’s a little late for a philosophical discussion.”

But he refuses to let it go. “Your _nature_ is evil. But whose isn’t? We’re all naturally greedy, selfish…”

“Yes, be we aren’t all naturally murderers obliged to live off the blood of other living creatures.”

Snow still isn’t listening. “Like original sin,” he says.

He’s lost me. “What?”

“Some of the care homes were churchy,” he explains.

“Ah.” I have little acquaintance with Normal theology.

“They believe people are born evil anyway.”

“Again, not the same as being born to drain others of their very life’s blood.”

“You weren’t born to that, either,” he says. “You didn’t have a choice. You still don’t. But you make the—the most conscientious choices you can, under the circumstances. That makes you good.”

I’m too tired for this conversation. “Okay, well, thank you for saying so.”

For some reason, my response seems to irk him. He punches his pillow like it’s said something obscene about his mother, or his lack of one. “I’m trying to build you up, compliment you—”

“I don’t need compliments. I need sleep.”

He’s silent for a minute. Long enough that I begin to wonder if he’s decided to be quiet so that I can fall back asleep. But then he whispers, “Do you sleep better at your flat? Alone? Or…” It seems something has occurred to him, something he doesn’t want to say. “Without me, anyway.”

Not allowing myself to think too hard about it—a trick I learned from him, actually—I reach over and pull him closer. “I sleep _more_ when you’re not around. But not better.”

SIMON

I realize when I say “alone” that I’ve made a huge assumption. It’s not that I truly think Baz is out… philandering… but I’ve seen the way people look at him—the way that Vampire King looked at him—and it’s clear he has options. Almost all of them better than me. My fear is that he hasn’t realized that yet. And what will happen when he does.

Life with me isn’t exciting (anymore). And it was never glamorous. I’m not smart, and I’m no longer powerful, and if I don’t stop drinking cider I won’t be physically fit for much longer either. (Mental note: more water, less cider.)(Salad?)(Maybe no need to go that far.)

So what does hold Baz to me? A shared history? It seems lately we’ve begun to diverge. We were forced together as roommates, as fellow mages, but now there’s a whole wide world out there, and the magnet from the Crucible isn’t strong enough to glue us together indefinitely.

So what will?

BAZ

I pull him as close as he will allow, and as close as I dare. I’m glad I fed before bed because he smells like cinnamon and butter, and sometimes I wonder if I can bite in my sleep. If I dream about feeding…? Is it like sleepwalking?

Eight years and more, and it hasn’t happened yet, but for most of those years he slept at least a few feet away. Now he’s _right here_.

Lamb said it was possible to take sips. Without Turning someone. But I don’t trust myself to try. I don’t think I have the kind of self-control required. In a decade, a century maybe, but not now.

In a century, Simon Snow will be…

_Don’t think about it._

We never expected to live even this long. Well, _I_ didn’t. Snow lives every day as if he will never die.

I live every day already undead. Either my time is running out, or it stretches ahead of me in a long, unbroken line. I’m not sure which.

I guess that’s true of everyone, though, isn’t it?

Snow has the right of it: enjoy every moment and don't think too much. But I can't enjoy being a vampire. And I _have_ to think about it, negotiate myself, constantly.

Some things are non-negotiable, however. If the day comes that my being close to Simon Snow puts him in jeopardy—danger that I don't believe I can overcome, danger from _me_ —I will remove myself. Until then... I'll keep him as close as he will allow. And as close as I dare.


End file.
